


after you

by watfordbird33



Category: Percy Jackson and the Olympians & Related Fandoms - All Media Types, Percy Jackson and the Olympians - Rick Riordan
Genre: Autistic Chris Rodriguez, Character Study, F/M, Just Before Final Battle, Non-Linear Narrative, POV Second Person
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-09
Updated: 2017-07-09
Packaged: 2018-11-29 17:36:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 641
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11445747
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/watfordbird33/pseuds/watfordbird33
Summary: Daughters of Ares don't as a rule have much to do with words, but she's always had a knack for them. A kind of poetry that she'd hate if you pointed out.Or: the Labyrinth in Chris Rodriguez's eyes.





	after you

“Are you scared?” she says.

“Of what?”

It’s cold enough now that she’s shivering even in her Montauk hoodie, hands ungloved and gone white at the fingertips with chill. She looks very small and very young. 

“Of going back,” she says, and when she looks at you you can’t really meet her eyes. “Of being. Seeing.”

Daughters of Ares don’t as a rule have much to do with words, but she’s always had a knack for them. A kind of poetry that she’d hate if you pointed out.

“I’m terrified,” you say, because she sees straight through your lies. “Are you?”

 

You did not understand what love was (this mystifying subcategory of  _ emotion, _ this silent slavedriver force), until you took her hand. It was only then that you realized there’s more to the strange dance of courtship than reproductive advantage.

This is the kind of thinking that makes them laugh at you, in Cabin Eleven, albeit a little guardedly--you still have the maze in your eyes. The kind of thinking that makes them say you should have been someone else’s child. Someone else’s son.

_ Is there a god of retards? _

_ God of special ed? _

They would like to pass you off on anyone else but themselves. 

But  _ she _ didn’t let go of your hand.

 

At first, you weren’t afraid. You had studied, because you were curious: dark places, small places, places that shifted without consent. And you had fought the monsters that lay within.

You were prepared for unpredictability but you were not prepared for the absence of logical thought. That was--and is--and will always be--your first weapon, and your last.

 

Sometimes, you dream that things come into your head and rip your mind to pieces. They take an immense amount of pleasure in it. Although you know logically that this cannot be true, sometimes you think it is anyway. The Labyrinth has stripped from you all the detachment you possessed.

 

“Is there a before and after?” she asked you, one day, when you were sitting cross-legged on the grass by the basketball courts. The basketball kept making a noise like one of the corridors in the maze, and it was making you twitch. “Do you think like that?”

You thought about telling her to be more specific but the thing was you knew exactly what she was trying to say. 

“There’s a Before and an After and an In Between.”

“What’s the In Between?”

“When I wasn’t  _ not me _ but before I was  _ me. _ ”

She thought on that. 

“So I suppose there’s an After the Labyrinth and an After You,” you told her.

You didn’t mean it to be romantic--you never do--but she turned a funny color anyway, and kissed you on the lips. There’s not a reproductive advantage you can think of for kissing, so you put it in the same category as holding hands. This mystifying subcategory of emotion. This silent slavedriver force.

 

You are still standing together, at the edge of the pegasi pasture. Her fingers have gone slightly more blue.

Time is being wasted, but you don’t make a move to conserve it. She has taught you to be patient; she has taught you to hold on.

“Yeah,” she says. “I’m afraid.”

And she looks at you. This time, you meet her eyes. It’s getting easier. (She makes you want to try.)

“We have to go after her,” she says. “You know we do.”

“We have to go after all of them,” you correct her. “We have to save the world.”

She smiles, and she’s the Labyrinth Cabin Eleven still sees in your eyes. She steals your logical thought. She disarms that final weapon. She knocks down all your walls. You can’t remember what you were Before.

“Then let’s do what we have to,” she says, and takes your hand.


End file.
